Methodology
Last updated: September 21, 2026
Primary sources first
Law of the game, competition format, tiebreaker or prize money: we check the regulation published by whoever runs the competition (IFAB, FIFA, UEFA, CONMEBOL, each national federation) before turning to press coverage or memory. It is the same standard behind every reference guide on the site, with the source linked at the foot of the page.
Match data, such as the teams, kick off time, score and table, comes from specialised providers: football-data.org is the main source, with TheSportsDB stepping in when the main one does not respond. A new data integration, with Sportmonks, is under construction; until it replaces the current providers on the site's pages, it is not a source of what is published.
Checked before it publishes
No story goes live straight from a draft. The AI drafts and organises, but never publishes on its own: before any text goes live, a human editor reviews it, and the facts have already been checked against the sources gathered while reporting.
Where the data is most likely to go wrong, the standard rises. The goal sheet of every match, who scored and in which minute, own goals included, is only published after two independent readers check the incident against the official source. That source is stated on the page itself.
Sources cited
Every reported story cites its sources at the foot of the text: the real name of the outlet and the true title of the page, linked to the original. The list is not cut short: a story built on thirteen sources shows all thirteen.
It is the public record of how we got to what we published. Each source shows the real title of the page we read, not a summary we wrote ourselves.
Public corrections
When a published story got something wrong, we fix the text and it shows: the story gets a public, dated note saying which claim was false and what the correct source says. The note sits next to the text it corrects, not hidden in the footer.
If the wording of the note later needs to improve, its text can be rewritten, but the date the reader sees stays the day the error was fixed, not the day the explanation got better.
Nothing expires quietly
We do not publish a claim with a hidden expiry date. A title count for a competition still being contested, a group stage format, a number of qualifying places: whenever a fact can change next season, the text dates the number instead of presenting it as final.
When we revisit a reference guide, the date that matters is the date we checked it, not the date it was first published. That is the date the reader sees.
Seven localised editions
We publish seven editions: Portuguese, English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Japanese. Each one writes for its own reader rather than translating another word for word: the angle, the examples and the cultural references change by market, the factual core does not.
When a published fact is wrong, the correction applies to every edition that states the same fact, each in its own wording.
Artificial intelligence, disclosed
The text on this site is written with the use of artificial intelligence, under the editorial direction of Lucas G. de Moraes. The AI drafts and localises; the one who reviews and decides what gets published is always a human editor, never the AI alone.
We do not hide this or treat it as a technical footnote: the editorial policy describes, in more detail, where AI is involved on each type of page, including the match page, which follows its own rule.